I feel I’m wasting valuable time that could be dedicated to packaging an alpha release into an iso so a not-so-technical person like me could do some testing, but until someone tells me to stop I’ll keep up my end of the discussion.
I listened to the Steve Smith piece (great playing) and I find it hard to hear anything that would indicate that the piece isn’t in 15:8 with a beat of 4,4,4,3. There’s a secton where two bars are run together to give 4,4,4, 3,3,3, 3,3,3, and a bit around 2m44s where the beat gets away and it all slips into 4:4 for one bar, also some sections that he divides into 30:16 then slices and dices that into all sorts of interesting divisons, but so do many other composers writing in standard time signatures (Beethoven’s 5th? Da da da daaaaa … it’s in 4:4). It reminds me of Blue Rondo a la Turk from Dave Brubeck’s album ‘Time Out’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc34Uj8wlmE) which is in 9:8 - or Could It Be … 3/3 ??? mcgruff, you’re a star.
A lot of well known pieces that do this kind of thing without using non-integer beat lengths, e.g. The Rite Of Spring, 1913 (anyone interested in seeing a bit of the score look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rite_of_Spring ), Carmina Burana part 6, 1940, (various 11 and 14 beat sections over a thumping 2:4 beat) and how about Kashmir by Led Zep? No half beats here but the rhythm’s clearly in a different time signature to the guitars and vocals. Also check out the solos in Rock and Roll.
I would really love to hear some music that could only be in a time signature such as X:7.5 but I’m not convinced yet.
or, if B = bass drum and S = snare drum, the basic sequence is:
| BBS - BBS - BBBS - BBBSS |
Parts of my song are based on this basic pattern, with variations of course. I speeded up the tempo at some point, for a fast ending sequence (144 BPM, 15/8 time sig)and it was a bit of a challenge to play that rhythm on the guitar and bass without thinking. I can now play it naturally but it took me a while
@thorgal
I know what you mean, I don’t like doing that either. When you get it finished remember me and let me know where to go to listen. I’d love to hear it. regards, chazza
The denominator in a conventional time signature is an indication of an orthographic representation, i.e. a 16th, an 8th, a quarter-note, etc. It’s there for the sheer convenience of the notator.
I like to pose this trick question to my students: Tap a steady beat on the table top, with no particular accent pattern, just ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta without discontinuity. Now tell me the time signature it’s in. Of course, the rhythm may be divided into any meter I like, merely with the placement of an accent, i.e. TA-ta-ta-TA-ta-ta-TA-ta-ta. Now we have a clearly articulated meter of 3 beats - now tell me what the beat representation is supposed to be in the written notation. 3/16 ? 3/8 ? 3/4 ? All correct. The decision is a notational decision. 3/3 will be incorrect because there is no accepted representation for the duration of a “3rd” note.
Now of course we can call the denominator anything we like if we’re not abiding by the conventions of standard Western notation as represented by Gardner Read (or UE or Schirmer). And of course then you can spend extra time explaining your decisions to musicians who will probably wonder why you went to the trouble.
The top number in the time sig can of course be any number. Compound meters are often represented as sums, i.e. 7+8 over a 4 indicates a 15/4 meter with a subdivision after the 7th beat. But you all know this. Fractional beats, e.g. 7.5 over 4 might be better construed as 15/8 (as thorgal indicated) and are likely to be so construed by reading musicians. Fluent sight readers will correct your notational inventions in order to sensibly perform your piece.
Las refers to Indian rhythmic practice. I have a question regarding that practice: Is there a sense of a mensural beat in a tala ? The concept of the rhythmic cycle is straightforward enough, but when they refer to a 17-beat cycle or a 33-beat cycle, is there a unit of measure implied, i.e. do they think in terms of notational units similar to 8th notes, crochets, and so forth ?
@davephillips: i don’t want to try to answer too authoritatively on this because I don’t think I know enough from the studies I did, but I’m pretty sure that the rhythmic cycles (“talas”) used by carnatic and other classical indian music have no notion of a mensural beat. the cycle is defined by a fixed number of beats and some subdivision, but the subdivision is (i think) always expressed in terms of the konakol phonemes (‘bols’), not note lengths. so for example, the most popular tala, tinntal, consists of 16 beats in 4 equal groups of 4, with equal timing between each beat onset:
dha dhin dhin dha
dha dhin dhin dha
dha tin tin na
na dhin dhin dha
notice that the “tin” and “na” sounds are slightly shorter and pitched differently than the dha/dhin sounds (all 4 are different from each other), and so the real structure of this tala is the shifting time feel that comes from the “tin tin na / na” section.
the thing about a given tala is that its just a structure on which the real performance is based. if you ever hear anyone play tintal, it will be quite hard to pick out the structure above, because they will be subdividing almost every beat into phrases. So for example, one of the “dhin” beats might be replaced by “Te Te Tete”.
the melodic instruments will be doing the same thing, and I am relatively confident that the performers will speak of note durations in terms of beats (or fractions thereof) rather than defined note lengths. of course, the actual terminology in different (its not english), but i think this that “beat” is an accepted translation of the terms used in India. thus, when playing this music, you don’t measure time in note lengths, but via the length of the tala and the tempo.
@Paul (and Dave Phillips)… this is also similar to music of sub-saharan africa where time is often determined by a cowbell pattern…
This has been reduced by many western musicologists as usually being in 12/8 - however speak to a traditional musician in Ghana and they may tell you that 12/8 is meaningless. (learned from my major in ethnomusicology many years ago… I knew it would come of value somewhere )…
For this reason the ability to have any denominator within Ardour maybe very useful … Musical rules are and always have been a construct of theory (specific to time period and culture), that over time are often broken… without breaking the rules we never would have had got as far as Beethoven, so it is important that the software we use doesn’t limit us to the accepted theory and allows for anything…
This is equally true for rhythm as it is for Harmony… (and thanks to certain sYnth manufacturer of the 80’s for allowing custom programmed intervals)…
Well there is my 2 cents on this very interesting Friday afternoon read.
I do not feel there are any limitations rhythmically with Ardour. Our concept of musical time signatures is based on convention and emphasis. When we use a time signature we are relating to the listener what the rhythmic emphasis is. In Ardour, if we want a 5/8 bar we have the tools to relate this with one emphasis at the beginning of the bar, or we can set it up as 2 +3 or 3+ 2 and we could do 2+2+3 for 7/8.
Our western system of notation is very flexible and works for almost anything I can think of. I guess what I am trying to say is the numbers in a time signature are meaningless. We find the emphasis of the music and then relate that anyway we can. So far I have not run into something that cannot be done in Ardour.
Note: Being able to change the denominator in Ardour would be useful to change the tempo of the click as a whole. As a practice tool, if you wanted to be able to have complex rhythmic relationships without several tempo changes set up, then having more denominators would be useful. In other words, being able to change the initial speed and have it apply the correct math across the piece instead of doing the math yourself.
I am not sure if I am on subject, just wanted to give my opinion on the rhythmic aspects of Ardour. When I get home this evening I will post something that I have been working on in Ardour that is in x/4 time but has subdivisions at the level of the quintuplet and is difficult to tap your foot to.
I could be wrong on this so please correct me if so but i believe 3/3 time would just be 3 half note triplets per measure, which is essentially 4/4 except it’s 0.6667 times faster
